Pyramid Principle: Why a Pyramid Structure
Summary
A reader groups and summarizes ideas as a matter of course in order to remember them. He comprehends ideas presented to him more readily if they are also grouped and summarized, and presented from the top down. All of this suggests that the clearest written documents will be those that consistently present their information from the top down, in a pyramidal structure, even though the original thinking will have been done from the bottom up. (Minto [1996] 2018, p 7)
Real problem with communicating
Now we come to the real problem of communicating. You can “see” these groupsing of items quite clearly. To communicate them means to ensure that the other person “sees” them in the same way. But, was the case with your wife, you can only present them one by one. Surely, the most efficient way to do this would be to present the category first and then the times. That is, to order the ideas from the top down. (Minto [1996] 2018, p 5)
People automatically group
Remember that the reader (or listener) can only take the sentences in one at a time. … If you do not tell him in advance what the relationship is, but simply give the ideas one at a time, he will automatically look for similarities by which he can group the points being expressed. (Minto [1996] 2018, p 5)
Pyramid rules
- Ideas at any level in the pyramid must always be summaries of the ideas grouped below them.
- Ideas in each grouping must always be the same kind of idea.
- Ideas in each grouping must always be logically ordered. (Minto [1996] 2018, 9)
One trick to satisfying rule #2:
Be sure you can label the ideas with a plural noun. Thus, you will find that all the ideas in the grouping will turn out to be things like recommendations, or reasons, or problems, or changes to be made. (Minto [1996] 2018, p 10)
4 possible ways of logically ordering ideas:
- Deductively (major premise, minor premise, conclusion)
- Chronologically (first, second, third)
- Structurally (Boston, New York, Washington)
- Comparatively (first most important, second most important, etc) (Minto [1996] 2018, p 10-11)